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Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

All police body cam footage should be public. Their work is paid for by tax money, they are supposed to be public servants. Governments, including their police force should be transparent to public they're supposed to be serving.

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>> All police body cam footage should be public.

Even if they're busting a brothel? Or arresting drunk drivers? Or breaking up a bar fight?

I get that people want transparency for "public servants" but I dont think people necessarily want transparency into regular peoples lives even if their actions are questionable. That leads to 24/7 suveilence under the poor argument of "if you have nothing to hide..."

Redaction systems exist and are used for exactly this purpose. It's entirely possible to be transparent and protect citizen privacy.

I work with a company that provides this type of technology for FOIA requests so I'm fairly familiar with it :)

How do you redact the arrest of someone who turns out to be innocent?

You remove their face and change their voice in the video. At least, when you're talking about body cam footage. You also blur license plates, addresses, etc. That's what is already being done for information requests to law enforcement.

This isn't a hypothetical btw. This is actually how it happens in many jurisdictions, and some law enforcement agencies are being proactive about this and thinking through how to be more transparent without risking privacy of innocent or guilty parties (both deserve privacy).

Usually via the general fund of the locality where the video was recorded.

This is trying to solve an institutional issue (police accountability) with technology. I don't think it will work and it will just normalize more surveillance. No amount of body cam footage is going to force DAs to prosecute, juries to convict, and police departments to discipline as long as a culture of circling the wagons exists. If you doubt that, look at how much footage was available of the arrest and murder of Eric Garner. And the officer responsible was still not indicted.

While I agree with the sentiment that public workers should be accountable to the tax payers, let's not forget they are still humans. Would you like your employer to point a cam at your desk and have it recording at all times?

>Would you like your employer to point a cam at your desk and have it recording at all times?

I mean, many employers go as far in that direction as they legally can. See the recent thread here about "bossware."[0]

However, my employer can't seize my private property, lock me or my family in a cell, torture me or simply shoot me dead in the middle of the street in broad daylight and get away with it. Police can, and do, all of those things all the time.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23705495

That's a bad idea. A lot of policing is taking someone aside an giving them a warning, defusing a situation between angry people, etc... A camera only complicates these matters.

What might be a better idea is stripping them of their privileged position. Today, if a police officer says something in court, it is automatically the truth. Take that away from the police, and let the camera be the official truth teller. Give accused people automatically a full version, so prosecutors can't edit against them.

UPDATE whoops, this should be attached to the grandparent post.

Fortunately, my job doesn't require me to carry firearms, detain citizens or uphold laws.

Furthermore, when I was being paid by government grant money, we were accountable for every thing we did while being paid and every penny we spent. We were required to make regular reports and justify everything. It'd be nice to see even that level of accountability with policing.

>Would you like your employer to point a cam at your desk and have it recording at all times?

You can always... get another job. If you don't accept the surveillance that comes with your power to inflict violence with impunity, maybe you shouldn't be given the power in the first place.

That's not a good way to deal with this. If you leave, the next guy will have the same shitty spying going on. Plus, nothing stops your next gig from spying on you as well. Until you've quit so many times that no employer is interested anymore. Better to tackle the problem at the root. No spying unless specifically defined how.

I agree with that sentiment, however...

In EU there are shows where TV crew is embedded in highway police (traffic police). They never let people off with a warning. I literally never seen it happen.

And in Europe in real life you have a chance to be caught for small infraction and receive waggle of the proverbial finger of the law.

So having all police live stream their cams might not only curb bad behavior of bad cops, but also good behavior of good cops.

I hear this argument a lot (ie. "body cams will eliminate/reduce police discretion"), but I always wonder, is that a bad thing? If the department policy is that everyone that goes 10mph over the limit is ticketed, and you don't get off because of your charisma (or not being a minority), is that a bad thing?

If my desk was the outside and I was enforcing "laws" with possibly deadly force, I shouldn't have a say in if I like it or not: it (should) come(s) with the work.

Well, my understanding is that there is no expectation of privacy if you’re using your employers equipment or network. I think it’s pretty clearly written on that offer letter when you sign the contract - or at least the ones I sampled. Not to mention the proliferation of CCTVs in almost all work places.

So to answer your question, yeah, I fully expect my employer to record what I am doing all the time and it’s a price that unfortunately I have to pay to survive in this digital world.

Even bathroom breaks?

I wouldn’t be surprised if they counted those as well. I don’t think they’ll go so far as installing cctv inside the bathrooms lol

It's simple. You encrypt the data. Only the DA has the key. This also prevents the police from being able to use their own footage when trying to make a statement, a benefit the public doesn't have.

If the DA determines that a crime was likely committed, then they can decrypt the footage and review, otherwise it stays stored for a short period of time, then destroyed.

This scheme assumes DAs are trustworthy, but there are a plethora of cases where DAs have protected bad cops. If only the DA can decrypt the video, that severely limits the opportunities of would-be whistle-blowers.

On the one hand: Police having privacy while on the job.

On the other hand: Not letting police get away with torture, murder, planting evidence, lying about what happened, throwing innocent people in jail.

Hmm... tough choice.

The issue is the privacy of the people they're interacting with.

Cops are civil servants with power of life and death over people.

Do not compare it with other jobs.

The takeaway here is that while I wouldn't want that, the consequences of my dicking around on YouTube are significantly less severe than the consequences of police misconduct

You may want to read the dystopian book “The circle”, that reasoning is a part of the plot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)

Spoiler: creating a public panopticon doesn’t necessarily results in a sane society

You forget that body cameras also record victims and bystanders.

And the _accused_. Those people need the most protection of all. The only category people that get any "special rights" in our Constitution are the accused. And for good reason.

And if you were falsely arrested, and had the footage out there without your consent, you'd be happy for that too? It's a double edged sword I think.

I don't think the parent comment (or anyone for that matter) is advocating for the unauthorized public release of bodycam footage. I think his point is that as public servants with extraordinary power, the public interest trumps any personal expectations of privacy while on the job. As such, the public shouldn't tolerate "but privacy!" as an excuse from police officers not to have bodycams.

By this argument all government employees must wear body cams, and the archived streams should be open to public viewing.

I don't think OP believes that. But it's what they said.

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